logo
Behind the Scenes

3/30 Preview – Good Day For A Back-To-Back + Laferriere’s Level, Searching For Clarity, Sturm on Malott

217 Comments

WHO: Los Angeles Kings (40-23-9) vs. San Jose Sharks (20-43-9)
WHAT: 2024-25 Regular-Season Game
WHEN: Sunday, March 30 @ 7:00 PM Pacific
WHERE: Crypto.com Arena – Los Angeles, CA
HOW TO FOLLOW: VIDEO: FanDuel Sports Network – AUDIO – ESPN LA App – TWITTER: @dooleylak & @lakings

TODAY’S MATCHUP: The Kings look to bounce back tonight, as they host the San Jose Sharks this evening in Los Angeles.

HEAD-TO-HEAD: The Kings are 1-2-0 this season versus San Jose, with each team winning at home over the first three games played this season.

Forward Warren Foegele leads the Kings against the Sharks this season with four points (2-2-4), while forward Alex Laferriere and defenseman Brandt Clarke have each tallied a goal and an assist. Over the last three seasons, Foegele has 11 points (4-7-11) from 10 games played versus San Jose.

KINGS VITALS: With the back-to-back, the Kings did not hold a morning skate in advance of tonight’s game.

Look for goaltender David Rittich to likely get the start tonight against the Sharks, with Darcy Kuemper going on the front end of the back-to-back yesterday. Rittich has faced San Jose more than any team throughout his career, posting a record of 6-4-3, with a .885 save percentage and a 2.94 goals-against average.

Sharing below the Kings lineup yesterday versus the Sharks –

Jim Hiller said that it is “fair to say” that Alex Turcotte and Tanner Jeannot are both unlikely to play tonight, though he stopped short of confirmation. Last night’s post-game press conference was too soon to speculate on any lineup changes for tonight, though Hiller was asked.

Should the Kings opt for a change, and Turcotte/Jeannot are indeed unavailable, then defensemen Jacob Moverare and Kyle Burroughs, as well as forward Akil Thomas, are options to enter the lineup tonight.

SHARKS VITALS: San Jose enters tonight’s game off of wildly contrasting victories, with a 6-1 loss against New York yesterday and a 6-5 shootout win over Toronto on Thursday.

Per Curtis Pashelka of the Bay Area News Group, here’s how the Sharks lined up yesterday –

San Jose forward Cam Lund made his NHL debut yesterday against the Rangers and scored his team’s only goal in defeat. Former Kings forward Tyler Toffoli has scored a team-leading 27 goals this season in his first campaign with the Sharks. With goaltender Alexandar Georgiev getting the start yesterday versus the Rangers, it would point to 25-year-old rookie goaltender Georgy Romanov starting tonight against the Kings, in what would be his fifth career NHL appearance.

Storyline Of The Day – Right Back At It
Typically, we talk about back-to-backs as being a negative. Naturally, team records are lesser in the second game compared to the first, with travel typically involved, which means a late arrival and an early start, not to mention the physical toll of going twice in 24 hours.

For the Kings, though, I think this back-to-back is welcomed. There was a clear frustration displayed by everyone who spoke with the media after yesterday’s loss to Toronto, including Head Coach Jim Hiller. I thought his post-game availability was better watched than read, which is why I embedded the video as opposed to transcribing it.

With that frustration comes another chance today to get right back to it.

“I think it’s kind of a blessing, we have a lot of games in a short amount of time, so it’s kind of a blessing to get right back after it,” forward Alex Laferriere said. “We’ve got to try and put this one behind us pretty quick and just take it [against the Sharks].”

Helping matter should be the fact that San Jose also played last night and played an evening games, with a post-game flight. That should be advantage Kings.

It’s also been a grind of a schedule for the Kings of late. Tonight’s game against the Sharks concludes six games in nine nights. The Kings, to their credit, are 3-2-0 in the first five. No team has played more games in March than the Kings have, though there are several teams with loaded up months as a result of a two-week break in February to accommodate the 4 Nations Faceoff.

Lots of games……lots of games.

“We play enough this time of the year, I don’t think we’ve practiced in two weeks, so every day, you just wake up and you’re worried about the next game,” defenseman Mikey Anderson added. “It’s a good thing we’re playing again [tonight].”

With all that being said, the standings don’t account for a team’s schedule. They don’t account for how a team played, either. Yesterday was far from the worst game the Kings have played this season. The Kings have been the team with games in hand all season long and you could say they’re paying for it now. They say games in hand are only good if you win them. Well, now’s the time.

The battle for second place in the Pacific Division now reads Kings 89, Oilers 89. Los Angeles has one game in hand, which comes tonight, as well as a pretty firm grip on the first tiebreaker, which is regulation wins. So, tonight’s game is very important.

It’s going to be a grind. Probably more of a grind than you want it to be, considering the state of both franchises. But in saying that no team has played more games this month than the Kings, no team has played fewer than San Jose. The Sharks are a team playing with nothing to lose. Often with those teams, you see what has happened over the last two games. A thrilling win over a playoff team, followed by a lopsided loss.

There are factors in both directions, but ultimately the Kings are the better team.

Tonight, the task is clear. They have to go out and show it.

3 To Watch For –
– Alex Laferriere scored last night for the first time since February 22.

Of all the players to go through a slump this season, Laferriere was perhaps the one I was least worried about. Jim Hiller agreed.

“Laf has such a level head, he’s a pretty practical person and he understands, we talked the other way and he nailed it, he said “I’m getting lots of chances, he was fine,” Hiller said of Laferriere. “Everybody wants it to go in, but he understands he’s playing well, which he is.”

Here’s why I was not concerned.

Comparing his chances created from the start of the season to his 17-game goal drought.

Scoring Chances, per/60 – 9.97 to 9.28
High-Danger Chances, per/60 – 4.59 to 5.06

Scoring chances slightly down, high-danger chances, slightly up. He wasn’t scoring, but the numbers would say he was playing just as well as he was earlier in the season. He’s got 16 goals and it feels like he’s going to hit 20 and then some by the end of the season.

Good to see him get one and hope my prediction above comes true.

– Thoughts here?

To me, this was the most reliable angle.

One of the problems with using television broadcast cameras to evaluate a high sticking play is that the cameras are not level shots. They’re shooting down on the play, which distorts the viewpoint into deceiving angles when you stop the tape and look at a still shot.

I thought the angle I embedded above was more reliable, because it was the closest shot I saw at an ice level. Ignore the red arrows, because they again are deceiving, but regardless, this looked to me to be a puck played with high stick. In my opinion, that goal should not have counted.

Ultimately, we don’t know how things would have played out. Kings clearly thought they had a definitive angle, which is why they challenged.

“We wouldn’t have challenged if we did think we saw that one,” Jim Hiller said after the game, of having an angle he felt showed a high stick.

Had the call gone the other way, as the Kings clearly thought it should have, it’s a 1-0 lead for LA, with 1:29 remaining on the power play. Not that the power play was thriving, but that’s pretty different than 1-1 and playing 4-on-4. Also would have negated a penalty taken by the Kings at 4-on-4, which led to a Toronto 5-on-3 advantage.

Look, it doesn’t change the fact that the Kings scored one goal. You score one goal, you don’t win all that often. But the call certainly altered the game.

I would love to be able to see the exact angles being looked at when making those determinations or hear from the situation room on how they are evaluating a play like that. Would help to eliminate confusion. Unfortunately, the lack of clarity is a common theme on plays like this in the NHL. I remember back to the game in Tampa Bay in January where a Kings goal was disallowed. Ultimately, the explanation made sense, but it felt like the explanation was given in a back hallway.

It would go a long way to change that on a league-wide level, to provide more clarity into controversial calls. In the NFL, reporters at a game can request a “pool report” regarding officiating calls made, which would trigger a designated local reporter interviewing a representative of the officiating crew. The NBA, MLB and MLS also have post-game media access with officials and umpires. The NHL does not. Missed calls will always happen. Human beings, after all. More clarity into the process, though, would go a long way in helping to remove the gray area that exists.

– Lastly, sharing this cool moment from Ontario Reign Head Coach Marco Sturm on Kings forward Jeff Malott.

Ontario had a huge game yesterday against Colorado, which it won, but that didn’t stop Sturm and the Reign staff from getting fired up over one of their own getting into a pretty high-intensity fight in yeseterday’s game. Pretty cool video below!

Kings and Sharks, 7 PM puck drop tonight at Crypto.com Arena. Kings look to get back on track and win a crucial game in hand this evening to move back ahead of the Oilers.

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.